1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a technology of treating a positive blood culture sample used for bacterial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing which are performed for the treatment of bacteremia, etc. Specifically, the present disclosure relates to a technology of performing a pretreatment process when a positive signal is detected in a blood culture, thereby omitting the previous subculturing process and thus enabling a rapid examination.
2. Description of the Related Art
Bacteremia is a very serious type of infections, and treatment of bacteremia requires identification of causative bacteria and selection of appropriate antimicrobial agents to be used for the treatment of the corresponding bacteria. Due to a recent increase of multidrug resistant bacteria which are resistant to many drugs, infections caused by resistant bacteria have been pointed out as a global risk factor.
For selection of appropriate antimicrobial agents against these resistant bacteria, bacterial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing are essential. For these tests, subculturing of a liquid medium of a positive-signal blood culture on a solid medium is performed for 16 hrs to 18 hrs, and then grown colonies are used for testing.
However, since preparation of the culture for these known tests requires a very long time, there is a disadvantage that rapid selection of antimicrobial agents is very difficult.
To omit this subculturing process, Japanese Patent Publication No. 2015-508667 suggests a technology of using a chemical buffering agent for isolation of bacteria from a positive blood culture. However, when chemicals are used to isolate microorganisms, there is a problem that it is very difficult to completely remove cells, etc., which may affect bacterial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing.